


That Weak, Watery Light

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Coronavirus, Domestic, M/M, Post-Fall (Hannibal)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Illness reigns outside. Inside, Hannibal bakes too many sweets. Medicine is the best medicine, but laughter surely doesn't hurt.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 130
Collections: Fic Journal of the Plague Year





	That Weak, Watery Light

It’s five in the evening, and thin light douses everything in its watery glow. The whole house is permeated with the cloying sweet scent of vanilla and sugar. The dogs go nuts as soon as they get inside, scrabbling at the floorboards and yanking on their leashes, choking themselves in their frenzy.

The house is dim and eerily quiet except for the sounds of canid life.

“Hannibal?”

The hairs on the back of Will’s neck prickle even as he unhooks a row of dog collars one by one. They’re off like a shot, skidding to a stop in front of a water bowl. Water sloshes over the sides as they lap greedily at it, panting and noisy.

“Here,” Hannibal says.

The noise comes from the kitchen. He’d assumed it was empty. It comes from the floor, where Hannibal is seated amongst a cluttered crowd of pastries. It looks like one of his dinner parties exploded. Pastries line every flat surface, crawling over the counters and the dining room table. There are trays of cream puffs surrounding Hannibal on the floor, and Will’s dogs are going to town while he watches, a vacant expression on his face.

“Hey! Stop that.” Will pulls one of the dogs away, shoving the rest away with his foot. “Hannibal, this isn’t good for them. If they puke it up later, you’re going to help me clean it up.”

Hannibal makes a vague gesture in his general direction.

“Yes, fine,” he says, distracted.

Will stops. He looks. He _sees._

He sees, but first there are the dogs to take care of, dogs who are still happily lapping away, faces and paws doused in pastry cream. Will drags them away by the collars one by one, clucking disapprovingly. It’s not as hard to corral them in the bathroom as it could have been—his dogs are well-trained, if apt to lose their manners when presented with a frankly shocking number of sweets.

It takes longer to clean them off. He doesn’t want to deal with the congealed, sour scent of old milk later, so he wipes paws and muzzles one by one, turning a blind eye as they do their best to lick themselves clean before Will can get a hold of them. As long as it all comes off, he doesn’t much care how it happens. They’ve probably eaten enough to make themselves sick anyway, and there’s nothing much he can do about it now.

He gives the sticky cloth in his hand one final rinse before tossing it in the sink, yet another thing to be dealt with later. He rubs behind ears as he picks his way out of the room. Dogs lick his hands, and he smiles. He murmurs endearments, promises to give them baths later.

He closes the bathroom door behind him with a soft click and ignores the scrabbling of nails against it. He doesn’t want to let them in the bedroom until they’re cleaned up.

Hannibal is still on the kitchen floor when he comes back, still wearing the same pensive expression. Will honestly couldn’t say if he’s surprised or not. Surprise, like disappointment, requires expectation, and he feels they’re treading on uneven ground in a land they haven’t crossed before.

He stops in the entryway, and eventually Hannibal looks up.

There’s really no one home. Hannibal looks but doesn’t see—looks straight through Will—and he wonders, not for the first time, if this is what other people experience when he checks out to go fishing. No matter; he waits, and recognition does dawn eventually. Will can tell the instant it happens, a kind of clarity taking up residence behind Hannibal’s eyes. He watches as it wakes up—the keen, sharp intelligence that he loves.

He sits down beside Hannibal once he’s something that Will recognizes. He’s careful not to sit in anything.

They’re quiet for a time. There’s no sound in the kitchen save the quiet whisper of their breath. They don’t touch, but Will is near enough to feel the warmth radiating off Hannibal’s skin. The scent of sugar is thicker here, heavy and warm. It reminds him of something he can’t quite put his finger on—birthday cake, peering into the oven and watching the batter rise under glaringly yellow lights; simple, childish want. He’s not entirely sure the memory is his.

Hannibal breaks the silence first.

“You must think I’m very foolish.”

Will shakes his head slowly. “Foolish isn’t the word.”

Hannibal turns to look at Will. “Will you make me guess?”

Will is quiet a moment longer, considering his words. It’s not out of carefulness—there’s nothing he could say that would carve a rift between them. He’s not sure there ever was, but if it existed before, it certainly doesn’t now. No, if he chooses his words with care, it’s out of a desire for precision.

He touches his tongue to his lip as though he could taste it—the exact tenor and flavor of Hannibal’s panic—but of course he can’t. All he tastes is the bland salt of skin, a faint hint of sugar on the air.

“This is how you exert control.”

Hannibal gives him a _look,_ and Will rolls his eyes.

“Okay, one of the ways. You don’t like uncertainty. You like chaos. There’s a difference. This—it’s mastery. There’s precision in it. Ergo, it makes you feel as though you’re in control.”

“The kitchen is my domain, and if I can control my domain, I can trick myself into believing that control extends beyond the borders of its tile.” Hannibal’s lip quirks up. “You would have made a fine psychiatrist, you know.”

Will laughs. It’s too loud in the hallowed space their kitchen has become, ringing out unpleasantly between the cabinets, but it’s joyful all the same.

“Nah.”

“No?”

“I lack the patience to wade around in the heads of normal people with normal problems.”

Hannibal concedes with a slight incline of his head. “But what is this if not a normal problem?”

Will looks at him. “Is that why it embarrasses you?”

“I don’t feel shame.”

“Mm. Shame, no. Its vestigial cousin, maybe. A certain itch when your feelings and behavior don’t align quite so neatly with your values.”

“You’d call that embarrassment?”

Will shrugs. “I’d call it being human.”

They’re quiet for a while longer. Eventually Hannibal picks up a tray of cream puffs and holds it out to Will.

“Profiterole?”

Will looks at the pastries, looks at Hannibal, and laughs.

Hannibal’s own laugh starts as an offended sniff, bellowing outward into a snicker that blooms into a full-throated belly laugh. They laugh each other sick. Pastries slide off the tray from a hand grown slack with inattention. They hit the floor with a wet plop, and Will and Hannibal laugh harder.

Eventually the sound trails off, joy lingering in the air like petrichor after a storm, until only the aftershocks remain.

Will plucks a profiterole from a nearby plate. It bursts on his tongue, sweet as anything.

**Author's Note:**

> _This story is part of the Fic Journal of the Plague Year project, a collection of stories written during the coronavirus pandemic that include an end note contextualizing the story in the author's experience of the pandemic._
> 
> I've tried to write poetry about current events, you know. I say this just because poetry used to be the way I processed emotions that seemed too big for me. Either I've lost the knack for it, or the current situation just seems too big to be contained in a poem. I continue to approach it belly down, cloaked in metaphors, saying it without saying it. Stories are good for that.
> 
> Like Hannibal, I've been compulsively baking. It occurred to me that it _is_ a form of control-seeking, at least for me. I used to bake professionally, and the way I've been baking—controlled, regimented, all efficiency and logic without artistry—is just how I baked back then, working on impossible deadlines, managing feats of sugar and flour. I felt powerful and in control then. Maybe that's what I'm seeking in my kitchen now.
> 
> As ever, you can come find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture).


End file.
